Monday, February 5, 2018

February 5, 1923 – Buck and Beauty, along with Dan
and Teddy, gallop out of the fire station at 10 East Hubbard Street, on this
day, responding to a false alarm at Chicago Avenue and State Street. It turns out that the alarm has been pulled
purposely as part of a celebration of the retirement of horse-drawn
firefighting equipment in Chicago. With
the retirement of the Hubbard Street horses, the city becomes the first city in
the country with more than 500,000 residents to claim a completely motorized
fire department. In April of 1921 there
were still 350 horses pulling fire equipment in the city. That was when the fire department’s business
manager, John F. Cullerton, led a city council subcommittee through a dozen
cities to see if motorized fire equipment was workable. The answer was clear. Cullerton estimated that the changeover would
save the city a half-million dollars in maintenance fees alone since each horse
cost the city an average of $3,621 a year to maintain while motorized vehicles
cost $1,000. [Chicago Daily Tribune, July
17, 1983] Buck and Beauty were sold
to a country pastor. No one knows what happened
to Dan, but Teddy ended up pulling a milk wagon. While on that job he was hit
by an auto at Forty-Seventh and Michigan, and was thrown to the ground with his
hip and leg smashed. As the Chicago Daily Tribune reported, “… Ted
lay still as a police patrol wagon sped to the scene. As the wagon approached – its bell clanging –
Ted, conditioned to the fire bell, responded.
He rose to three legs, plunged ahead a few feet, and then toppled. A veterinarian, tears in his eyes, ended
Ted’s misery with a bullet.”

February 5, 1921 – Formal action is taken on this date to obtain a state charter for the Chicago Zoological Society which plans to build a zoo and gardens on 300 acres of land that Mrs. Edith Rockefeller McCormick has donated to the forest preserve. The president of the county board and the head of the forest preserve commissioners, Peter Reinberg, who is also one of the incorporators of the society, writes, “Though only in its tentative stage, the prevalent idea is that the organization shall follow closely that which has brought the Art Institute of Chicago to its acknowledged high standard.” [Chicago Daily Tribune, February 6, 1921] Commissioners of the new society will include: Frank J. Wilson; William Hector MacLean; George A. Miller; Charles L. Hutchinson, president of the Art Institute of Chicago; Charles H. Wacker, chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission; and Judson F. Stone, manager of the McCormick family realty interests. The location of the anticipated zoo is between Thirty-First Street and Thirty-Fifth Streets and is bordered by the Des Plaines River and Salt Creek. It is anticipated that Pershing Road will lead to the grounds and that the Chicago Plan Commission will “lend its aid toward beautifying the approach to the gardens.” The story explains why the street that runs past the south lot of Brookfield Zoo is Rockefeller Avenue.

February 5, 1998 -- The Canadian National Railroad Co. announces that it is in negotiations to acquire the Illinois Central Railroad, the "Main Line of Mid-America," a railroad that began in 1849 when Senator Stephen Douglas secured a federal land grant for the start-up, the first such grant ever awarded to a railroad. Douglas was also instrumental in a deal that allowed the I. C. to purchase a 200-foot right of way through the South Side for $21,310. Later, the line built a trestle in the lake opposite the center of the city that carried trains to a freight yard on the river. The fill that was over the years placed between that trestle and the edge of the city is now Grant Park. Mark Twain worked as a steamboat pilot on an Illinois Central boat that connected the railroad to the south. A young engineer named John Luther "Casey" Jones began his career operating trains that carried passengers form the Loop to the 1893 fair in Hyde Park. With Canadian National's announcement a love-hate relationship between Chicago and the Illinois Central that has lasted for close to 150 years is nearly at an end.